Four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied: social experiments, natural experiments, matching methods, and instrumental variables. In each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number...

An overview is presented of some parametric and semi-parametric models, estimators, and specification tests that can be used to analyze ordered response variables. In particular, limited dependent variable models that generalize ordered probit are compared to regression models that generalize...

In this note we consider several versions of the bootstrap and argue that it is helpful in explaining and thinking about such procedures to use an explicit representation of the random resampling process. To illustrate the point we give such explicit representations and use them to produce some...

For vectors x and w, let r(x,w) be a function that can be nonparametrically estimated consistently and asymptotically normally. We provide consistent, asymptotically normal estimators for the functions g and h, where r(x,w) = h[g(x),w], g is linearly homogeneous and h is monotonic in g. This...

The main objective of this paper is to derive the efficiency bounds for estimating certain linear functionals of an unknown structural function when the latter is not itself a conditional expectation.

It is common practice in econometrics to correct for heteroskedasticity.This paper corrects instrumental variables estimators with many instruments for heteroskedasticity.We give heteroskedasticity robust versions of the limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) and Fuller (1977, FULL)...

The most common approach to estimating conditional quantile curves is to fit a curve, typically linear, pointwise for each quantile. Linear functional forms, coupled with pointwise fitting, are used for a number of reasons including parsimony of the resulting approximations and good...